Teacher Education and Pedagogy: Theory, Policy and … · Edited by Michael Evans Cambridge University Press Accepted for publication February 8, 2012 ... of domains (e.g., number

Running Head: COORDINATING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1

Coordinating Professional Development Across Contexts and Role Groups

Kara Jackson McGill University

Faculty of Education Department of Integrated Studies in Education

3700 McTavish Street Montreal, QC H3A 1Y2

Canada [email protected]

Paul Cobb

Vanderbilt University Department of Teaching and Learning 1930 South Drive, 240 Wyatt Center

Peabody Box 330 Nashville, TN 37203

USA [email protected]

Teacher Education and Pedagogy: Theory, Policy and Practice Edited by Michael Evans

Cambridge University Press

Accepted for publication February 8, 2012 The research project reported on in this chapter was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. ESI-0554535 and DRL-1119122. Kara Jackson’s contributions to the article were also supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of either Foundation. The work reported on in this chapter has been conducted in collaboration with Thomas Smith, Erin Henrick, Ilana Horn, Christine Larson, Annie Garrison, Lynsey Gibbons, Charlotte Munoz, and Jonee Wilson.

COORDINATING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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Abstract

In this chapter, we report on an ongoing research project in which we have partnered with

leaders of two U.S. school systems to both support and investigate large-scale

instructional improvement. One potentially important improvement strategy involves

coordinating professional development across contexts (e.g., pull-out teacher professional

development, school-based teacher collaborative time) and role groups (e.g., teachers,

coaches, school leaders). We draw on recent literature on teacher professional

development and teacher education, which suggests the importance of both focusing

professional development on specific instructional practices and of creating opportunities

for participants to both investigate and enact those practices. We ground our discussion

of coordinated professional development in our work with leaders of one of the two

school systems in which we are collaborating to design professional development for

teachers, coaches, and school leaders around high-leverage instructional practices in

middle-grades mathematics.


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In the United States, mathematics education researchers have reached a broad

consensus about a set of learning goals for students that include developing both

conceptual understandings of key mathematical ideas and procedural fluency in a range

of domains (e.g., number and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, data analysis

and probability). Additionally, most U.S. mathematics education researchers agree that

instruction should support students to engage in the disciplinary practices of mathematics

(e.g., generalizing from a solution, justifying solutions, evaluating the reasonableness of

solutions, making connections among multiple representations of a mathematical idea)

(Franke, Kazemi, & Battey, 2007; Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001). These learning

goals for students are represented in several documents including the National Council of

Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM; 2000) Principles and Standards for School

Mathematics, and the more recent Common Core State Standards in mathematics

(Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).

The NCTM Standards also present a research-based vision of mathematics

instruction intended to support students’ attainment of these learning goals (Hiebert &

Grouws, 2007). Students’ development of conceptual understanding and procedural

fluency requires frequent opportunities to solve cognitively demanding tasks (e.g., non-

routine tasks that have the potential to support students in connecting mathematical

representations and ideas) (Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 2000). Instruction of this

type requires the teacher to orchestrate discussions of students’ solutions in which they

are pressed to justify their reasoning and to make connections among the solutions

(Franke, et al., 2007; Stein, Engle, Smith, & Hughes, 2008). The instructional goals and


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forms of classroom practice detailed in the Standards have been elaborated and further

specified by a number of elementary-, middle-, and high-school mathematics curricula

developed with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (Senk & Thompson,

2003).

The instructional vision proposed in the Standards has been called “ambitious

teaching” because it aims to support all students to develop enduring understandings of

central mathematical ideas by teaching in response to students’ thinking (Kazemi,

Franke, & Lampert, 2009; Lampert, Beasley, Ghousseini, Kazemi, & Franke, 2010;

Lampert & Graziani, 2009). Ambitious teaching contrasts sharply with typical U.S.

mathematics instruction that emphasizes the reproduction of demonstrated procedures for

solving routine problems (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999).

The task of supporting the development of ambitious mathematics teaching across

classrooms, schools, and school systems is challenging and involves supporting teachers

to significantly reorganize their current instructional practices. Previous and ongoing

research (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppesco, & Easton, 2010; Cobb & Jackson, in

press-b; Coburn, 2003; Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001) indicates that

improving the quality of instruction on a large scale entails supporting both teachers’

learning and the reorganization of the school settings in which they work.

In this chapter, we report on an ongoing research project that seeks to both

support and investigate large-scale instructional improvement in middle-grades

mathematics. As described elsewhere (Cobb & Jackson, in press-b), we have developed a

provisional, empirically-grounded theory of action for instructional improvement in

mathematics at scale based on analyses conducted during the first phase of this project


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(2007-2011). In its current iteration, the theory of action includes five interrelated

components: a) coherent system of supports for ambitious teaching that include

curriculum materials and instructional guidance instruments such as curriculum

frameworks; b) pull-out teacher professional development and teacher collaborative

meetings; c) mathematics coaches’ provision of job-embedded support for teachers’

learning; d) school instructional leadership in mathematics; and e) support for the

development of schools’ capacity for instructional improvement provided by school

system leaders.

We restrict our focus in this chapter to one central aspect of this theory of action:

the coordination of professional development across contexts (district-based and school-

based) and across role groups (teachers, mathematics coaches, and school leaders). We

use the term “professional development” to refer to activities that are intentionally

designed to support the learning of members of a particular role group. Professional

development for teachers therefore includes pull-out sessions led by a mathematics

specialist for teachers from a number of schools, school-based collaborative meetings of

mathematics teachers, and one-on-one support provided by mathematics coaches in

teachers’ classrooms.

The recent literature on teacher professional development and teacher education

indicates the importance of organizing professional development around specific high-

leverage instructional practices (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009) and of creating

opportunities for participants to both investigate and enact those practices (Grossman et

al., 2009). We are currently investigating conjectures about coordinated professional

development for teachers, coaches, and school leaders that focuses on high-leverage


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instructional practices in the second phase of the research project (2011-2014) in which

we have partnered with leaders of two U.S. school systems that serve a total of 180,000

students.

Research Context

The overall goal of the research project (Middle School Mathematics and the

Institutional Setting of Teaching, MIST)1 is to understand what it takes to support

middle-grades mathematics teachers’ development of ambitious teaching at the scale of

large, urban, U.S school districts. We provide a brief description of the U.S. educational

system before discussing relevant aspects of the research project.

The U.S. Educational System

The U.S. educational system is decentralized, and there is a long history of the

local control of schooling. Each U.S. state is divided into a number of independent school

districts. In rural areas, districts might serve less than 1,000 students whereas a number of

urban districts serve more than 100,000 students. In the context of the U.S. educational

system, urban districts are the largest jurisdictions in which it is feasible to design for

improvement in the quality of instruction (Supovitz, 2006).

Large school districts such as those with which we are collaborating have a

central office whose staff are responsible for selecting curricula and for providing teacher

professional development in various subject matter areas including mathematics. In this

chapter, we use district leaders to refer to members of the central office staff whose

responsibilities focus on either classroom instruction or school leadership. We use district

mathematics specialists to refer to central office staff whose responsibilities focus

1 For information on MIST, see http://www.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/mist.xml.


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specifically on the teaching and learning of mathematics. We use district leadership

directors to refer to central office staff whose responsibilities involve evaluating and

supporting school leaders (i.e., principals, assistant principals).

The role of the U.S. federal government in education has been quite limited

historically when compared with most other industrialized countries. However, in 2001,

the U.S. Congress passed a national policy called the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.

The intent of NCLB is to enable all students to meet high performance standards in

language arts and mathematics. States are given financial incentives to design and enact

the three central components of NCLB policy: content standards for student achievement,

tests aligned with the standards, and mechanisms for holding schools accountable for

increasing scores on those tests and for reducing disparities in achievement between

particular student sub-populations. Historically, students of color, students from

economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and students for whom English is not their

first language have performed at significantly lower levels than white students and

students from economically advantaged backgrounds on mathematics assessments

(Darling-Hammond, 2007).

Most impartial commentators consider that NCLB policy is flawed in two

important respects. First, most states lacked the capacity to respond effectively to the

assessment and accountability mandates of the policy (Elmore, 2004). As a consequence,

the tests used in these states to assess student achievement emphasize procedural skills at

the expense of understanding central mathematical ideas (Shepard, 2002). Second, it is

becoming increasingly clear that most district and school leaders are ill-equipped to

respond effectively to state accountability policies (Elmore, 2006). The majority of


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districts are implementing strategies that involve “teaching to the test,” and some are

attempting to “game the system” (Heilig & Darling-Hammond, 2008). As a

consequence, reform that was intended to focus on rigorous content standards is instead

driven by procedurally-oriented assessments in most districts (cf. Resnick & Zurawsky,

2005). However, a minority of schools and districts have developed moderately worked-

out strategies that go beyond teaching to the test by supporting teachers in improving the

quality of their instructional practices (Elmore, 2006).

Description of Research Project

During the first phase of the project (2007-2011), we collaborated with four, large

urban districts. Each of the districts is typical of urban districts in most respects in that it

has to cope with a number of challenges including substantial numbers of low-performing

students, limited funding, high teacher turnover, and a significant proportion of novice

teachers. However, they are atypical in one respect: they are amongst the minority

identified by Elmore and are responding to high-stakes accountability pressures by

attempting to support teachers’ development of ambitious instructional practices.

As part of the project, we conducted annual cycles of data collection, analysis,

and feedback in which we collected and analyzed data to document how the districts’

improvement strategies were playing out in schools and classrooms, shared our findings

with district leaders, and made actionable recommendations about how their

improvement strategies might be revised to make them more effective. [For a complete

description of the annual cycles, see Cobb and Jackson (in press-a) and Henrick, Cobb,

and Jackson (in press).] The leaders in all four districts acted on our recommendations

and, as a consequence, we became co-designers of their improvement strategies. The


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primary product of the first phase of the project was an empirically grounded, provisional

theory of action for instructional improvement in middle-grades mathematics, as outlined

above (Cobb & Jackson, in press-b), which we developed as we conducted the four

annual data collection, analysis, and feedback cycles.

In the second phase of the project (2011-2014), we are collaborating with two of

the original four districts for a further four years to test, revise and elaborate the

conjectures inherent in the provisional theory of action. We are continuing to conduct the

annual data collection, analysis and feedback cycles. In addition, we are intentionally

working to support the development of district-leader capacity to support instructional

improvement. We lead a two-day meeting with district leaders (e.g., heads of Curriculum

and Instruction, Mathematics, Leadership, Bilingual Education, Special Education) each

June to co-design professional development for teachers, mathematics coaches, and

school leaders. We also co-plan and co-lead professional development for school leaders

with members of the Curriculum and Instruction and Mathematics Departments each

school year. Co-designing for instructional improvement with district leaders enables us

to test and refine our emerging theory of action for instructional improvement at scale.

Supporting Teachers’ Development of Ambitious Teaching

Achievement of the learning goals and vision of teaching specified in the NCTM

Standards requires that teachers develop sophisticated knowledges and practice. For

example, supporting all students’ understanding of particular mathematical ideas requires

that teachers understand those ideas deeply and how children typically develop those

ideas (Hill, Ball, & Schilling, 2008). It also requires skill in responding to and building


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on student contributions in ways that further each student’s current understanding

(Lampert, 2001).

As Ball and Forzani (2009) observe, enacting ambitious instructional practice is

both complex and unnatural in that it differs markedly from typical everyday interactions.

Teachers therefore need sustained support given the learning demands inherent in

developing this type of practice (Borko, 2004). There is some evidence that in-service

pull-out teacher professional development that impacts classroom instruction shares the

following qualities: it is sustained over time, involves the same group of teachers working

together, is focused on issues central to instruction, and is organized around the

instructional materials that teachers use in their classrooms (Darling-Hammond, Wei, &

Orphanos, 2009; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Kazemi & Franke,

2004; Little, 2003). However, the influence of pull-out professional development for in-

service teachers on instructional practice and student learning outcomes has usually been

minimal (Borko, 2004). This is in large part because the impact of high-quality

professional development on what teachers do in their classrooms is mediated by the

school settings in which they teach (Cobb, McClain, Lamberg, & Dean, 2003).

Key aspects of school settings that influence teachers’ classroom practice include

the instructional materials and resources that teachers use (Stein, Remillard, & Smith,

2007), what school leaders hold teachers accountable for (Elmore, 2006), and the formal

and informal sources of support on which teachers can draw. Supporting teachers’

development of ambitious instructional practices on a large scale therefore involves

reorganizing the school settings in which teachers work. It is a problem of organizational

as well teacher learning (Cobb, et al., 2003; Coburn, 2003). High-quality pull-out


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professional development is necessary, but, by itself, insufficient to support teachers in

improving the quality of their classroom instruction.

A central tenet of our work is that coordinating professional development across

contexts and role groups will support teachers’ learning and contribute to the

reorganization of the school settings in which teachers work. This coordination involves

focusing on the same set of instructional practices in teacher, coach, and school leader

professional development. Recent research on teacher education suggests the importance

of organizing professional development around “high-leverage practices” that happen

frequently in the classroom and “in which the proficient enactment by a teacher is likely

to lead to comparatively large advances in student learning” (Ball, et al., 2009, p. 460).

The findings of several studies indicate that focusing on particular practices supports

novice teachers’ skilled enactment of routines that are central to ambitious teaching (Ball,

et al., 2009; Kazemi, et al., 2009; Lampert, et al., 2010). Examples of high-leverage

practices include eliciting and responding to student thinking, managing small group

work on challenging tasks, and orchestrating whole-class discussions of students’

solutions to challenging tasks (Stein, et al., 2008).

Grossman and colleagues (Grossman, this volume; Grossman, et al., 2009;

Grossman & McDonald, 2008) have noted that pre-service teacher education tends to

emphasize pedagogies of investigation at the expense of pedagogies of enactment.

Pedagogies of investigation involve analyzing and critiquing representations of practice

such as student work and video-cases of teaching (Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, & Pittman,

2009; Sherin & Han, 2004). Pedagogies of enactment involve planning for, rehearsing,

and enacting aspects of practice in a graduated sequence of increasingly complex settings


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(e.g., teaching other pre-service teachers who play the role of students, working with a

small groups of students, teaching an entire class). Grossman et al. argue convincingly

that pedagogies of investigation and enactment are both necessary if teachers are to

develop ambitious forms of practice. This claim is supported by studies of professional

learning, which suggests that it is critical for novices to co-participate in activities that

approximate the targeted practices with more accomplished others (Bruner, 1996;

Forman, 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991).

As in the case of pre-service teacher education, pedagogies of investigation are far

more common in in-service mathematics teacher professional development than

pedagogies of enactment. This is especially problematic as in-service professional

development aims to support teachers’ reorganization of already established practices that

are presumably functional to some extent in their current school settings. It is unlikely

that an exclusive focus on pedagogies of investigation will be sufficient to support in-

service teachers’ development of ambitious instructional practices. In our work, we are

therefore adapting the design principles of practice-focused pre-service mathematics

teacher education to in-service teacher professional development as well as to

professional development of coaches and school leaders.


In the following paragraphs, we describe our current work in which we

collaborate with district leaders to design coordinated professional development that

entails pedagogies of investigation and enactment across contexts (particularly for

teachers) and across role groups (teachers, mathematics coaches, school leaders), all

organized around specific high-leverage practices. We ground our discussion by


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focusing on the professional development for the 2011-2012 school year designed in

collaboration with leaders in one of the two districts with which we are working, District

B. We in the process of collecting data and are yet to analyze data to document how the

design is actually being implemented. As a consequence, we are not in a position to

report on the influence of the professional development on teachers’, coaches’, and

school leaders’ practices.

District B

District B serves approximately 80,000 students, 55% of whom are Hispanic, over

25% are African American, and about 15% are White. Over 25% of all students are

classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP). District B’s student achievement patterns

in middle-school mathematics are typical for large, urban districts. For example, on a

recent state assessment in eighth-grade mathematics, less than 40% of the African

American students met the eighth-grade mathematics standards, as compared to 55% of

the Hispanic students and about 75% of the White students. Only about 25% of the LEP

students met the eighth grade standards in mathematics.

District B district leaders have framed the overall low-performance in middle-

school mathematics achievement and the disparities in achievement as a problem of

supporting teachers’ learning rather than merely of ensuring that they teach for the test.

They adopted an inquiry-oriented mathematics text that was aligned with ambitious goals

for student learning, created an elaborate Curriculum Framework that is designed to

support the teachers in using the text effectively, and provided pull-out professional

development for teachers. In addition, the district implemented a school-based

mathematics coaching program in all middle schools. The coaches teach half of each day


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and serve as a coach for the other half of the day. The coaches’ primary responsibilities

are to support teachers’ development of ambitious instructional practices (e.g., by

observing instruction and providing feedback, co-teaching, modeling instruction) and

principals’ development of content-specific instructional leadership practices. The

mathematics coaches received relatively intensive professional development. As part of

the district’s improvement plan, school leaders were supported and held accountable for

acting as instructional leaders in mathematics, and have received extensive professional

development. District leaders expect them to observe classroom instruction regularly and

provide feedback on instruction, look for the implementation of the adopted text and the

Curriculum Framework, and work with the coach to determine the assistance that

teachers need to improve their instructional practices.

Identification of a High-Leverage Instructional Practice

In the mathematics text adopted by District B, lessons are organized around

cognitively demanding tasks (which tend to embed mathematics in problem-solving

scenarios) and are designed to unfold in three phases. First, the task is introduced to

students (i.e., the “launch” phase of instruction). Second, students work on solving the

task either individually or in groups. Third, the teacher leads a concluding whole-class

discussion in which students are pressed to make mathematical connections between

solutions and to develop conceptual understanding of significant mathematical ideas

(Stein, et al., 2008). During the first phase of the project (2007-2011), we identified the

launch as crucial in terms of whether all students are able to engage productively in

solving the task. Characteristics of launches that support all students’ productive

engagement include that the cognitive demand of the task is maintained and that the


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teacher supports the students’ development of a common language for describing

contextual features and mathematical relationships specific to the task (Jackson, Garrison,

Wilson, Gibbons, & Shahan, 2011; Jackson, Shahan, Gibbons, & Cobb, accepted for

publication). An empirical analysis of 132 video-recorded mathematics lessons revealed

a positive relationship between how teachers launched tasks and students’ learning

opportunities in the concluding whole-class discussion (Jackson, et al., 2011). We also

found that in most of the 240 lessons we video-recorded in the 2009-2010 and in 2010-

2011 school years, the launch was not effective and did not support all students to engage

productively in the task. Additionally, it was very common for the teacher to lower the

cognitive demand of the task in this first phase of the lesson by suggesting particular

procedures to use to solve the task.

In Ball et al.’s (2009) terms, we identified launching cognitively demanding tasks

as a high-leverage practice that, if conducted effectively, was likely to result in

significant improvement in opportunities for student learning. In the second phase of the

project, we therefore proposed to leaders of the two collaborating districts that the launch

serve as a focal instructional practice around which professional development for

teachers, coaches, and school leaders should be organized for the 2011-2012 school year.

Coordinating Professional Development for Teachers Across Contexts

Teachers in many U.S. school districts often participate in both district-based and

school-based professional development. District leaders often provide district-wide pull-

out professional development for all mathematics teachers at particular grade levels for a

few days each year and teachers are released from teaching to attend. For example, in

District B, middle-grades mathematics teachers were provided with four days of pull-out


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professional development during the 2011-2012 school year, two days prior to the school

year and two during the fall. This professional development was led by mathematics

coaches and district mathematics specialists and was organized by grade levels.

It is increasingly common for U.S. districts to mandate that school leaders

schedule time during the school day for teacher collaboration, in which the mathematics

teachers at a school meet on a regular basis to work on problems of practice. In District

B, school leaders were required to schedule at least one meeting each week for

mathematics teachers to work together on improving instruction. These are costly

initiatives, given that teacher collaborative time varies in the extent to which it supports

instructional improvement (Little, 1993). A growing number of studies indicate that when

teacher collaborative time functions well, it provides opportunities for teachers to address

problems that arise in the course of instruction, integrate ideas and tools introduced in

district professional development into practice, and rehearse specific practices (Cobb,

Zhao, & Dean, 2009; Horn & Little, 2010).

One of the conjectures we are currently investigating is that teachers’ work during

collaborative time will be more productive if it follows up on district professional

development by focusing on the same high-leverage instructional practices. The design

developed with leaders in District B also acknowledges that district professional

development is better suited for pedagogies of investigation because large numbers of

teachers are involved, whereas school-based teacher collaborative time is suited for both

types of pedagogies. Research in teacher professional development suggests that

potentially productive teacher collaborative activities might include doing mathematics

problems and comparing solution strategies, analyzing student work and classroom


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video-recordings, and rehearsing high-leverage instructional practices (Ball, et al., 2009;

Borko, et al., 2009; Kazemi & Hubbard, 2008; Sherin & Han, 2004). In addition, this

research indicates the importance of ensuring that someone with instructional expertise

leads collaborative time by setting an agenda, initiating and guiding activities, and

pressing teachers to work on, reflect on and improve particular aspects of practice. Given

that few of the teachers in District B who are participating in our study have developed

sophisticated instructional practices, we view the coaches in each school as the most

likely candidates for providing this leadership.

Although U.S. districts are increasingly funding coaching positions as a primary

means of supporting teachers’ learning, the designs of their coaching programs vary

considerably. As we have noted, District B implemented a school-based coaching design

in which a mathematics teacher in each middle-grades school serves as a mathematics

coach for half of the day and teaches the other half of the day. In contrast, the second

district with which we are collaborating created a cadre of full-time coaches who each

serves three or four schools.

Research on how coaches might work with individual teachers in their classrooms

and on what constitutes high-quality coach professional development is limited.

However, research on teacher learning suggests that potentially productive coaching

activities include those in which the teacher co-participates in activities central to

ambitious teaching with the coach. These activities might include co-teaching and/or

enacting the coaching cycle of jointly planning a lesson, observing the enactment of the

lesson, and then jointly analyzing the lesson (Bradley, 2007; Neufeld & Roper, 2003;

Olson & Barrett, 2004).


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In our collaboration with District B district leaders, we co-designed teacher

professional development (district pull-out professional development, teacher

collaborative time, coach’s work with teachers) such that all components focus on a

single high-leverage practice, the launch. The intended district professional development

primarily involves pedagogies of investigation in which teachers analyze video-

recordings of teachers introducing cognitively demanding tasks to identify key aspects of

successful launches that support all students’ productive engagement. Against this

background, teachers then plan launches with other teachers from their school.

Teacher collaborative time is intended to serve as a context for teachers to engage

in cycles of investigation and enactment specific to the launch. For example, leaders in

District B expect that teachers will plan how to launch tasks in forthcoming lessons,

rehearse these launches with their colleagues acting as students, conduct the launches in

their classrooms, and then debrief the launch with their colleagues during the next teacher

collaborative time.

In addition to leading teacher collaborative time, leaders in District B expect

coaches to support individual teachers in launching tasks in their classrooms. This work

might involve co-teaching, modeling effective launches, or observing and providing

feedback depending on the coach’s assessment of the teacher’s practice. Coaches are also

expected to use assessments of individual teachers’ launches to inform their agendas for

collaborative time.

The coordination of professional development for teachers across contexts

depends crucially on the expertise and skill of the professional development facilitators

(Borko, et al., 2009; Elliott et al., 2009). A recent study conducted by Coburn and


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Russell (2008) indicates the importance of professional development leaders routinely

posing questions that press participating teachers on key issues (e.g., identifying the

central mathematical ideas in a sequence of tasks, identifying aspects of the task scenario

that might be unfamiliar to some students, anticipating student solutions to particular

tasks). Coburn and Russell present evidence that coaches who had been pressed on

issues of this type in coach professional development subsequently pressed teachers on

the same issues, and that teachers then began pressing each other on these issues. Based

on this finding, we conjecture that it is important that teachers are pressed on the same set

of issues in district-based and school-based professional development.

Summary. The goal of the professional development design for teachers was to

coordinate the various forms of professional development for District B teachers (district-

based pull-out professional development, school-based teacher collaborative meetings,

coach’s work with individual teacher) around a single, high-leverage instructional

practice, launching complex tasks. The design of this professional development reflected

the central principle that teachers would need to be provided with carefully sequenced

cycles of investigating and enacting launching with a more expert colleague, if they were

to develop proficiency in launching complex tasks in their classrooms.

Coordination of Professional Development Across Role Groups

The impact of coordinated professional development for teachers on their

classroom instruction is likely to be influenced by other aspects of the school setting such

as school leaders’ expectations for teachers. In the first phase of our research project, we

identified cases in which teachers participated in professional development designed to

support their development of ambitious teaching, but school leaders communicated


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instructional expectations that were at odds with the goals of ambitious teaching (Cobb &

Jackson, in press-a). For example, leaders in some schools expected teachers to skip

sections of the mathematics text adopted by their district and instead focus on preparing

students for the state assessment, which emphasized procedural fluency. These and other

observations indicate the importance of coordinating professional development for

teachers, school leaders, and mathematics coaches so that school-level support and

accountability are tightly aligned.

Professional development for school leaders. In our work, we conjecture that

the distribution of instructional leadership in mathematics between school leaders and

mathematics coaches can both support and press teachers to improve the quality of

mathematics instruction. In our view, it is unreasonable to expect school leaders, most of

whom do not have a mathematics background, to directly support mathematics teachers’

development of ambitious instructional practices. However, we are investigating whether

school leaders can be supported to communicate appropriate instructional expectations to

teachers, while mathematics coaches support teachers in meeting those expectations.

Our work suggests that the provision of feedback is a key way in which school

leaders can communicate instructional expectations and press teachers to develop the

intended forms of practice (Katterfeld, 2011). In the case of District B, district leaders

had expected school leaders to observe mathematics teachers’ instruction on a regular

basis and give them feedback for several years. In the 2011-2012 school year, school

leaders are expected to observe how teachers launch tasks and provide feedback that

communicates instructional expectations specific to the launch. In order to support

school leaders’ development of this capability, we co-planned and co-led four half-day


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professional development sessions with District B district leaders from the Curriculum

and Instruction Department. In addition to testing and revising the professional

development design, we viewed this collaboration as an opportunity to support district

leaders’ capacity to support instructional improvement.

The half-day professional development sessions involved cycles of investigation

and enactment, similar to the design of teacher professional development. School leaders

first watched video-recordings of launches and were pressed to identify characteristics of

a successful launch. These characteristics were framed in terms of “look-fors” and “ask-

abouts,” which formed the basis for a tool that could then guide their classroom

observations of launches. School leaders then observed launches of specified

mathematics tasks in their schools using this tool, ideally with their mathematics coaches

so that they could discuss their observations with a more expert colleague. Our goal in a

subsequent session was to support school leaders’ formulation of feedback that would

communicate instructional expectations for effective launches. In preparation for this

session, we worked with district leaders to create a Feedback Guide that school leaders

could use when crafting feedback. During the session, school leaders viewed video-

recordings of launches and gave feedback to participants who acted as teachers in the

sessions. They were then asked to observe specific launches in their schools, provide

feedback to the teacher, and make notes of their observations and feedback for discussion

in a subsequent session. The overall intent of these sessions is to provide school leaders

with scaffolded opportunities to practice observing and providing feedback that is

specific to launches.


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The district leadership directors who are responsible for both evaluating and

supporting school leaders attended the professional development for school leaders. Our

rationale was that if the district leadership directors attended professional development

with school leaders, they would be more likely to hold school leaders accountable for

observing launches and providing teachers with feedback that communicated appropriate

instructional expectations. The head of the Leadership Department also indicated to the

district leadership directors that he expected them to observe and discuss launches with

the school leaders when they visited schools.

In addition to observing the launch and providing feedback, District B district

leaders expect school leaders to engage in two other instructional leadership practices.

First, school leaders are expected to meet with their mathematics coach every week to

discuss their observations of classroom instruction (especially of the launch) and how to

support teachers’ development of the intended practices. These meetings are also

intended to serve as a context for the school leader and coach to jointly plan the agenda

for teacher collaborative time, based on their assessments of classroom instruction.

Second, school leaders are expected to participate in mathematics teacher collaborative

time on a regular basis. School leaders’ attendance at those meetings is intended to serve

several purposes: to communicate the importance of the meetings to teachers, to ensure

that the focus of the meetings is on instructional improvement, and to provide

opportunities for school leaders to learn about the aspects of instruction that teachers are

attempting to improve. Together, the three focal instructional leadership practices

(observe instruction and provide feedback, meet regularly with the coach, attend

mathematics teacher collaborative meetings) and the professional development were


23

designed to enable school leaders’ reorganization of their leadership practices such that

what they did on a daily basis in schools would support teachers’ development of

ambitious teaching practices.

Professional development for mathematics coaches. As we have indicated, the

envisioned role of school leaders is to press teachers to develop the intended instructional

practices, whereas the role of mathematics coaches is to support teachers’ development of

those practices. In the two districts with which we are currently working, coaches are

frequently the sole source of expertise in a school. In these situations, the goal of

professional development is to enable coaches to both lead groups of teachers effectively

during teacher collaborative time and follow-up by supporting individual teachers in their

classrooms.

In District B, mathematics coaches received a week of intensive professional

development prior to the start of the 2011-2012 school year and participated in monthly

full-day sessions during the school year. We contributed to the planning of this

professional development, which was led by the Director of Secondary Mathematics and

the district mathematics specialists. As was the case with teacher and school leader

professional development, the sessions involved cycles of investigation and enactment

specific to the launch. Activities include watching video-recordings of launches to

identify characteristics of successful launches, and then practicing using the same Look-

Fors and Ask-Abouts tool and Feedback Guide as the school leaders. In addition, coach

professional development includes a focus on supporting teachers to develop successful

launches, both during teacher collaborative time and while working with individual

teachers in their classrooms. For teacher collaborative time, the emphasis is on


24

facilitating teachers’ co-planning and rehearsals of launches, whereas the emphasis for

work with individual teachers is on co-teaching, modeling, and enacting the coaching

cycle with teachers. District mathematics specialists are expected to provide coaches with

additional support by modeling how to conduct coaching cycles and how to co-teach

launches in the coaches’ classrooms (recall that the District B mathematics coaches are

half-time teachers). The intent of these activities is to provide the coaches with

opportunities to co-participate in the work of coaching with a more a more accomplished

colleague, a district mathematics specialist.

Summary. The goal of the professional development design that we have

described is to support school leaders and mathematics coaches in becoming effective

instructional leaders who assume joint responsibility for improving mathematics

instruction. District B’s design includes providing school leaders and coaches with

professional development on the launch that is tailored to their specific role, and with

common tools for conducting observations and providing feedback (e.g., the Look-Fors

and Ask-Abouts tool, the Feedback Guide). In addition, school leaders and coaches are

expected to meet weekly to discuss their classroom observations and to plan future

collaborative time meetings. The intent of these supports is that school leaders’ and

coaches’ classroom observations will have a common focus that will ground their

discussions about how to support teachers.

Conclusion

The approach we have described of designing professional development in

collaboration with district leaders is an ongoing attempt to support the development of

district leaders’ capacity to support school instructional improvement in mathematics.


25

This work is guided by three key design principles. First, it appears important that

professional development involves both pedagogies of investigation and enactment, and

that it be organized around specific, high-leverage practices. Second, it appears

important that opportunities for professional learning are coordinated across contexts,

such that what participants work on in one context is explicitly linked to and elaborated

on in another context. Third, it appears important that professional development is

coordinated across role groups so that it supports both teachers’ learning and the

reorganization of the school settings such that they become supportive environments in

which teachers can work on enacting ambitious teaching.


26

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Teacher Education and Pedagogy: Theory, Policy and … · Edited by Michael Evans Cambridge University Press Accepted for publication February 8, 2012 ... of domains (e.g., number